I use airport to connect to a belkin n+ router which is in turn connected to my eircom adsl modem.... I opted for this as elara told me that it had the most powerful signal to penetrate thick walls....

the problem is now persistent....

I have full signal to my belkin, and all the lights on the front of the eircom (zyxel) are good, but I can't connect, sometimes connection times out, sometimes it says I'm not connected... then if i run network diagnostics it has all green lights bar a yellow for internet and server, it goes through all stages with the internet light turning red then it asks which wireless network when I specify mine it all goes green, and says...

yeah everything's working fine....

I have reset to factory defaults both routers and deleted all network prefs and passwords and setup from scratch all over again on the computers but it still happens

I am running osx 10.4.11 from a laptop and a desktop and 10.5.8 from a laptop....

Not if they're giving dhcp in different subnets, the Netopia will be giving out ip's on lan ports in the 192.168.1.0 range (if its ip is default 192.168.1.254), the Belkin in the 192.168.2.0 (if its ip is default 192.168.2.1). Should work if both are default, the Belkin should get a lease from the Netopia and give out ip's with the route out.

Try disabling all encryption for the time being, just to rule that out.
Also login to the Belkin and manually add the Eircom dns servers to the wan section, 213.94.190.194 and 213.94.190.236 and reboot it and Your pc to get a new ip lease. I take it You didn't try pinging an ip address instead of a domain, it could be nearly working. Maybe the dns forwarding got lost with 2 routers (I've honestly no faith in Belkin)

On second thoughts, the easiest way to solve this is to stop the Belkin routing altogether by disabling dhcp and stop using the wan port (sellotape over it) leaving all routing to the Netopia. This way You turn it into a switched access point, all 4 lan ports will be the same. Restart everything to get new ip's.

On second thoughts, the easiest way to solve this is to stop the Belkin routing altogether by disabling dhcp and stop using the wan port (sellotape over it) leaving all routing to the Netopia. This way You turn it into a switched access point, all 4 lan ports will be the same. Restart everything to get new ip's.

let me check if i have this right....

leave eircom factory setup, then plug the ethernet cable into one of the ethernet ports on the belkin rather than the "modem" port...???